


Waystation

by endgirl



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: 4x02, F/F, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endgirl/pseuds/endgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where is Helena and what happened to Myka’s hair straightener, as explained with angst. Set during 4x02.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waystation

The waiting was the hardest part. Myka knew; she’d had plenty of practice. She had waited endlessly for her father’s approval, waited to grow pretty like Tracy, waited for Sam to stride into her office in D.C. and tell her it had all been a terrible mistake. She was a master at living in limbo. She trudged on with a smile, even when her dreams hung flickering and just out of reach. A thousand times she had wished to just _know_ , for _sure_ , that she would never be her dad’s favorite, that beauty was off the table, that Sam was dead and gone and it was, in fact, all her fault. At least then it would be over.

That was how she felt now, stumbling through the days since Helena had left South Dakota to answer to the Regents for her sins. Only this time, Myka wasn’t sure she would make it to the end. A handful of days were a blip compared to the years she’d spent in awkward uncertainty over one hope or another, but the ache of each evening come and gone without Helena’s return threatened to overwhelm her.

She passed the time by laughing half-heartedly at Pete’s jokes and devising a new filing system for the chaos that masqueraded as Artie’s office. The ping in Philadelphia served as a welcome distraction from watching the door to the Umbilicus, but even the rush of a hunt did little to banish her thoughts of secret councils and bronzing chambers. Each night she fell into bed with a sip of Nyquil and a desperate wish for a few hours’ peace, and each morning she woke feeling more exhausted than before. It wasn’t until Pete remarked that she was _looking sorta Little Orphan Annie, minus the singing and the ginger_ that Myka realized she had forgotten to comb her hair again. And was that an untied shoe on her foot?

She knew she couldn’t go on like this much longer, half in the world and half outside it, waiting. It was only a matter of time until she made a mistake, until she forgot her gun instead of her blow dryer. Whatever the Regents’ verdict was, she would face it. She just needed to know.

It had happened so quickly, the night of Sykes’ attack on the Warehouse. Leena had woken her from where she dozed on Helena’s chest, too giddy and disbelieving to commit fully to sleep, with a knock on the door and a panicked cry that Claudia had disappeared. Helena pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder as they rose in the darkened bedroom, the unexpected ease of their reunion quickly replaced with worry for their young friend. And, at least for Myka, with a stinging guilt that she’d been reveling in her gain while Claudia suffered a loss alone.

Artie had stepped into the foyer as they reached the bottom of the stairs, and Myka knew the sudden tension in the woman next to her was about more than just Claudia. She, too, prickled with apprehension. Artie had been kind to H.G. back at the Warehouse -- almost _trusting_ \-- but Myka feared it couldn’t last. And yet here he was, against all odds, pausing in his monologue about their youngest Agent to stare at Helena with a compassion she’d rarely seen him muster for anyone. He cleared his throat, shaking his hands as if to shoo the issue away, and mumbled something about going with his gut and consulting the other Regents. Then he was back to business.

Myka had let out the breath she’d been holding in a long rush. She didn’t understand why, but Artie had changed his mind. He had fought for the woman he’d so recently called the villain. After some sort of evaluation, H.G. would be back at the Warehouse for good.

Pete shuffled down the stairs behind them, pajama-clad and yawning, but not too tired to waggle his eyebrows and mime a fist bump at Myka in reference to the women’s joined hands. Helena insisted they leave immediately to search for Claudia -- she knew a few tricks they might use. Artie averted his eyes with an uncomfortable cough, and that’s when Myka knew. Whatever the Regents had in store, it was to take place _right now_. H.G. Wells was to be ripped from her once again, and, as always, there wouldn’t be any time to say goodbye.

Before she could process was happening, before she could shove Helena back up the stairs and into her room and throw the lock closed, Mr. Kosan stood in the front door.

Her grip on Helena’s hand tightened until she couldn’t tell whose pulse it was throbbing in her fingertips. She didn’t hear the explanations that came from the Regent’s dispassionate lips, nor the fervent words that Pete spoke at her side. Was he arguing for H.G.? She wasn’t sure. The only thing she could make out clearly was the feeling of Helena’s thumb as it stroked the back of her hand -- once, twice, three times -- before it fell away.

She would go with them, Myka told Mr. Kosan when she finally found her voice. Helena was already moving toward him. She could give a report; she could help. H.G.’s quick and firm _No_ made the cogs that had begun to turn in her mind lurch to a stop. She might have felt hurt, but Helena’s eyes were all promises and tenderness as they came to rest on her. _Find Claudia_ , she said, her smile crooked and soft, _I’ll be back the moment I’m able_. There was a kiss that ended before it began, and then Myka was alone.

It had been five nights since then -- two since she and Pete had returned from Philadelphia -- and Myka was beginning to run out of distractions. She reorganized the office so thoroughly that Dewey himself would have been pleased, though Artie was less so. She sat Pete down and read the entire Warehouse Manual aloud to him, relenting to his requests for funny voices but skipping over sections _6.A.4, Bronzing_ and _Appendix D1, Disciplinary Actions_. They all spent a fair amount of time hugging Steve. But underneath her joy at his return, Myka worried that they couldn’t possibly be lucky enough to get back both Jinks and H.G. And if Steve was here... well.

She just needed an answer, whatever it was. For the uncertainty to be over. At least, this was what she told herself each day as she willed Mr. Kosan to return with news, any news. But this waiting was different, somehow, from all the times she’d done it in the past. This time, when she imagined the worst -- a blank-faced Regent stepping into the bed and breakfast to tell them that Helena would not return -- she didn’t feel the relief she expected, heartbreaking though it would be. She just felt brokenhearted.

There was still so much unresolved between them, so little that had actually been said in comparison to all that needed to be. The night in Myka’s bedroom after they defused Sykes’ bomb had not been the first time. But it was the first time in so long, since before Yellowstone, and the short-lived reunion had been more about clinging desperately to the present than confronting past hurts or making plans for the future. Myka knew they had demons yet to vanquish. But without H.G. here and whole, she couldn’t even try.

As days became a week, the painful, familiar tedium of waiting began to morph into fear. Maybe she was wrong to wish for an end to the limbo in which she lived. Maybe waiting for Helena to be evaluated was to be the happiest part of their story -- the part where hope still shone before it was stamped out. Maybe the decision wouldn’t go the right way, and when the waiting was over the world would come crashing down around her with a finality she’d been able to avoid thus far. With a sickening start, she realized that perhaps H.G. had been reluctant to have her come along to give a report because she already knew she was doomed, and she didn’t want Myka to feel responsible. Images of the places Helena might be flashed in her mind -- in bronze, behind bars, dead.

Myka let herself drown in the panic for a moment, shuddering as she dug her fingernails into the leather cover of the book she was pretending to read. But she hadn’t made it through nearly three decades of waiting by allowing fear to take control, and soon she pushed the thoughts from her mind. Helena had Artie on her side, shocking as that was, and somehow Mrs. Frederic and Mr. Kosan, too. Everything would be fine, if she could just force herself to wait a little longer. And really, there was nothing else to do.

She turned back to the novel in her hands, its title and most of what she’d read already forgotten. The upholstery of the armchair scratched the skin of her back that wasn’t covered by her tank top, but she leaned into the discomfort. She had picked this seat in the study for precisely that reason, so its pricks and scrapes would keep her tethered to reality instead of floating off into fantasies of Helena’s return -- or her demise. Leena and Artie were arguing about pastries in the kitchen, but she could smell the fresh maple Danishes more clearly than she could hear their voices. That was the other reason she had chosen the armchair -- it was tucked in the farthest corner of the room, angled so she could not see the entryway each time she glanced up from her book.

Flipping the page, she forced herself to focus on what she was reading. Dickens, that was what it was, _Hard Times_. Perhaps when she finished she would be ready to pick up _The Invisible Man_ , or maybe even _The Time Machine_ \-- she’d been inching closer and closer to Helena’s literary contemporaries all week, closer to H.G. Wells herself. Reading was the way she had survived the last 29 years, and the pull of a familiar comfort eventually overwhelmed her restless teetering between the world of the bed and breakfast and the world of her mind, where Helena dwelt. She fell, finally, into the Victorian streets of Coketown, into Dickens’ circuses and factories, until the scratchy armchair and the voices in the kitchen faded away.

And so it was with momentary confusion that she heard the front door creak open, quiet but insistent. A pair of hard-heeled shoes clicked in the foyer, too sharp to be Claudia or Steve and too sure-footed to be Pete. Mr. Kosan was back. And he was alone.

Myka’s heart seized, _Hard Times_ forgotten in her lap, and for an instant she wished she could sink right into the chair, just disappear into nothingness, where she could keep on waiting forever and never have to face the devastation that was waiting for her in the hall. But she was Myka Bering; she was strong and stable. She would not break down yet, not in front of a Regent, and she rose from her seat with wooden limbs. There was only a flash of weakness, a single moment in which she closed her eyes as she stepped out of the study, turning toward the front door.

When she opened them again, hands trembling at her sides, Myka’s breath caught in her throat. The brown eyes that stared back at her were not Mr. Kosan’s.

It was over.


End file.
